before the storm. [Pg 99] And then the heavens opened, the fountains of the great deeps were broken down, and with absolute literalness the floods descended. The bursting clouds, torn asunder by the wild winds, riven by the pent up lightning within their black and turgid breasts, disburdened themselves. The water came down, as it did of old when God washed the face of the world, in a flood. The narrow of the cañon was filled ten, twenty, thirty feet in a moment by the cloud burst. The black water rolled and foamed, surging like the rapids at Niagara. The body of the girl, utterly unprepared, was caught up in a moment and flung like a bolt from a catapult down the seething sea filled with the trunks of the trees and the débris of the mountains, tossing almost humanly in the wild confusion. She struck out strongly, swimming more because of the instinct of life than for any other[Pg 100] reason. A helpless atom in the boiling flood. Growing every minute greater and greater as the angry skies disgorged themselves of their pent up torrents upon her devoted head. [Pg 100] [Pg 101] [Pg 101] CHAPTER VIII DEATH, LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION The man was coming back from one of his rare visits to the settlements. Ahead of him he drove a train of burros who, well broken to their work, followed with docility the wise old leader in the advance. The burros were laden with his supplies for the approaching winter. The season was late, the mountains would soon be impassable on account of the snow, indeed he chose the late season always for his buying in order that he might not be followed and it was his habit to buy in different places in different years that his repeated and expected presence at one spot might not arouse suspicion. Intercourse with his fellow men was limited to this yearly visit to a settlement and even that was of the briefest nature, confined always to the business in hand. Even when busy in the town he pitched a small tent in the open on the outskirts and dwelt apart. No men there in those days pried into the business of other men too closely. Curiosity was neither safe nor necessary. If he aroused transient interest or[Pg 102] speculation it soon died away. He vanished into the mountains and as he came no more to that place, he was soon forgotten. [Pg 102]
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